This would be the longest race of the year so far, with 10 hours to complete as many laps as possible and, with it being the first official outing of Infinity Cycles MTB Race Team, Rich Holland and I really wanted a decent result. I’d been having a good old fret over the last couple of weeks and had convinced myself that my condition was dropping-off rather than improving and I should go out and WORK HARDER… This is, of course, precisely the wrong thing to do!
The only thing for it I decided, was to do some High Intensity sessions… these are either an hour on the Turbo trainer or a full lap of The Monkey & The Dog Trails at Cannock Chase… as hard and as fast as possible. I chose the latter, couldn’t really face an hour of sweat and pain in the garage and it turned out to be just the right choice, it was quiet and, without much “traffic” to deal with, I took just over a minute off my “PB”… and before you ask, it’s a secret. You’ll all be out trying to beat it!
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were studious carb-loading… whilst most of the country are examining the labels on their food in an effort to minimise their calorie intake, I don’t think I stopped eating for three days knowing I’d be burning something in the region of 9000 calories at the weekend.
Kirroughtree is one of the 7Stanes mountain bike centres in the Scottish Borders, a good hour due West of Dumfries, and one of the best. I’d taken Friday off work to have a leisurely start to the day, and get up there with enough time to set-up camp and go for a lap of the course.
Whilst the rest of England were basking in glorious summer sunshine, complaining about the heat… the monsoon season had arrived in Galloway. During a break in the rain I went out for a lap, and Oh Boy what a lap, 9.25 miles, 600m of ascent, 5% forest road, 70% Fast flowing hardpack singletrack with technical rock sections and 25% slippery, muddy, rooty Hell, some of it a steep slippery death!
Lizzie was away on her annual pilgrimage to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, so Rich’s partner Shonah was to be our "Pit Pixie" good practice for Sleepless. We ran through instructions the night before, how we like our drinks mixed, what food and when etc etc… no pressure Shonah!!!
All the competitors lined-up behind the Police Car that was to lead out the mass start, Rich noted “there are far too many shaved legs up here!“.
9:30am on the dot we’re off, out to the road and up a long tarmac hill for 1st lap only, to string-out the field. Rich and I had agreed to try and stick together for the first couple of laps, he was still there at the top of the hill, then after a section of forest road we hit the first bit of singletrack. Mission accomplished for the 1st lap anyway, we were up at the front of the field and away from any potential hold-ups. I glanced back expecting to see Rich hot on my tail, but he’d dropped-in a bit further back and been held-up, so sticking together didn’t last long, but to be fair it is virtually impossible in XC Racing anyway.
With 10 hours of riding ahead of us, I really wanted to get into a good rhythm but keep the pace high, that's easy on the first couple of laps when you have plenty of other teams around you most of which are out for one lap before handing over to the next team mate. My tactic really was to see just how long I could hold-off the one-lap-heros, and surprisingly it was quite effective, most soloists say the hardest bit is being constantly overtaken by everyone but I still seemed to be passing plenty.
The rain didn't actually stop, it merely varied in intensity, but it wasn't cold and once you've been through a few puddles it didn't really matter. The muddy sections of track however were getting worse with every lap, one of the steeper descents became unridable and, to the disappointment of the growing collection of spectators, was eventually re-routed to take the pressure off the medics!
In races like this you really have to break the whole thing down in your mind, the sections you like, the bits you hate, the places to eat, tick them all off one by one and before you know it your back at the start looking for that poor wee soul standing in the rain waiting to hand you a fresh bottle and some food as you come past, always with a cheery smile and words of encouragement... 5 hours in and the words of encouragement were "Your 9th overall, Rich is 17th"... that stoked a dwindling fire!
There was little respite on this course, every descent was steep leaving your triceps burning, the rock sections wreck your wrists, your shoes, shorts, pockets and eyes all full of mud, there's a slippery descent that I fell-off every lap, on precisely the same bit of stripped tree root... but I was still enjoying myself, and at 7 hours I'd fought my way up to 6th overall and Rich to 9th. From this point I had worked out that I could get probably get 9 laps and as I came out of the trees at the end of the 8th lap Shonah said "That's it, its finished, that was your last"... I wasn't listening (shocker!), we still had 45 minutes to go, I could still get another lap, stuff the bottle, I probably had enough left anyway and charged off only to be greeted by Frazer at the finish with a miniature bottle of Benromach and the news that they had cut the race short by an hour because of the deteriorating conditions. Sorry Sho... maybe I'll learn to listen someday!
Can you tell which one of us had the good sense to put a front mud-guard on?
In the end Rich completed 8 laps in 9hrs 49mins, that gave him 6th in the Senior Male Solo and 9th overall, and still looked full of life!...
As for me, well that was the shock of the day, 8 laps in 9hrs 14mins gave me my first ever podium, winning the Veteran Male Solo, and placing me 5th overall.
I might have been a wee bit excited about this...
It was the first "No Fuss" event I've been to and have to say I really enjoyed it, its yet another fabulously well organised event with a great atmosphere. Unfortunately Kirroughtree was never designed with enough drainage infrastructure to deal with so many people, I don't think anyone has quite foreseen just how popular mountain biking would become. Anyway, this little matter meant that there were no showers on site... so how do you get cleaned-up? Err a bit like this...
A final huge thank you to Shonah, for 9 hours of standing in the rain, just to keep us prima-donna racers fed and watered, never without a cheery smile and the highlight of every lap!
Photos courtesy of Shonah Dobson and 21CPhotos
Sorry there's not Garmin data this time, it's had another hicky fit and chose to reset itself! :(
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